On a vocal track, if I want to take the last word in a chorus and extend it - e.g. instead of “you”, have it sound like “yoooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu” - how would I do that?
Change tempo only works up to a certain length before it starts sounding weird, and ‘repeat’ doesn’t work because of the discontinuity of each loop… is there a technique to looping the sound so that I can avoid the breaks at the start of each repetition?
It’s not easy.
You need to “loop” the sound (using the “Repeat” effect), but you need to choose the start and end points of the repeating section very carefully to achieve a smooth result.
Looping sounds well is a bit of an art - there’s a lot of information and tips on the Internet on how to do it well - books have been written on the subject.
If you could select the full word “You” and use “Export Selection” to export it as a WAV file, you could upload it (attach it to your reply) and then people could have a go and hopefully demonstrate what is possible with your audio sample.
Right, thanks. In the past I have spent ages getting the right bits so that the loop sounds almost seamless but I was hoping there was an easier way. Oh well.
Extending a note without distortion.
Select to highlight all of the note’s current duration. Under Effects go to “sliding time scale/pitch shift”. Set Initial Tempo Change to zero. Final Tempo Change determines the length of the note extension time. Moving the slider all the way to the left (-90) is the longest extension time. Adjust as desired.
After extending the note once with Sliding Time Scale / Pitch Shift, you can repeat the process to extend the note’s duration even further.
While your answer works for the current version of Audacity in January 2019, it’s probably a bit late for Manglehold who asked the question on June 22, 2011.
Phase vocoder. Granular synthesis.
Phase vocoder is a technical monster. Granular processing could be simpler for vocals.
What granular processing effects Audacity now has? Plugins? External open source software? This is a background check - if we yet don’t have all the whistles and bells.
“Paulstretch” is simple to use, and adds a unique character to the sound: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/paulstretch.html